Love how the gov't works some times

[M-technik-3]

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20090921/NEWS02/909210333&referrer=FRONTPAGECAROUSEL

This article is about my airplane or at least the modernized one. It's a workhorse the Army and the Navy love yet the USAF and Congress hate it.

It's not modern nor sleek enough for them aka it's an E30 in a E92 world. Yet it's still cheaper to modernize the 111 C5's left and fly them to 2065 than continue to build in piece mill C17's which are smaller haul less and use more fuel.

Go figure, right? The improved C5M just set 41 new world records trouncing any C17 in all catagories of weight to altitude. This with basicly just new engines! We in the C5 world are still flying around on the first bypass fan design and not even a high bypass design. Funny how minor upgrades can make a doggy Eta in a quick beast.

[bimmerboy08]

Hopefully the modernization happens, hell we're still flying around c-130s and b52s from the fifties and sixties. The c5 is a cool jet, too bad they don't have navigators on them anymore otherwise I might have a chance to fly one someday.

[M-technik-3]

Nav's have been a thing of the past with all the other moderized stuff. Shame but there done. Engineer's are a dying breed as well.

Nav's were given the chance to slide into pilot training slots for a reshred.

[bimmerboy08]

eh they are calling us "combat systems officers" now, and it seems like everyone who isn't one calls us a dying breed. I'd gladly retrain as a pilot but as long as I'm getting a paycheck and flying I don't mind what I do.

I'm guessing you're a pilot?

[M-technik-3]

Nope, Enlisted aircrew. Loadsmasher been one for last 13 years. Before that I was CLSS, special duty.

[bimmerboy08]

ooh cool man. It's a small airforce I'm sure our paths will cross someday. I'm a semi-new LT, still in training and still not mission qualified.

[Ral]

There's a lot of this going on with the Navy as well. Look up the LCS, as well as the DDX. Both are overpriced monsters that tried to incorporate so much new technology they each cost nearly twice their budgets and still aren't very effective.

Also, the T-45 that I fly was bought from the British, then has to be modified once it gets here, for a total of $25 mil per copy and it's still got its fair share of problems. There's lots of other aircraft we could be flying for much, much less.

[scabzzzz]

English please?

:D

[Scotaku]

English please?

:D

In a nutshell, Congressional dickheads telling the military how to do their jobs.

[LBJefferies]

Hopefully the modernization happens, hell we're still flying around c-130s and b52s from the fifties and sixties. The c5 is a cool jet, too bad they don't have navigators on them anymore otherwise I might have a chance to fly one someday.

Meh, a lot of stuff that they say needs to be modernized doesn't actually need to be modernized. The B52's for example may be almost 50 years old but their airframes are good for another 40 years or so. Not only that but we have so damn many of them.

[hugh jass]

don't the C-17 and C-5 fill different roles for the AF? The C-17 can go a lot of places the C-5 can't, right?

[hoveringuy]

The Coast Guard Dauphin. What a piece of shit! It's actually a capable helicopter the way it was originally designed, but to serve in the Coast Guard it had to have the good French Turbomecca engines replaced with US Allied-Signal engines.

They were pieces of crap!

It could barely hover once the first survivor/victim/passenger was hoisted up. Now they are being converted BACK to Turbomecca Ariel engines.

The C5 was always a great airplane but the lack of funding in the 90's made them maintenace nightmares and gave them a bad rep. Still a great airframe... I'd like to see them all get re-engined with new avionics. They have been beat to death during the First Gulf War, and then the sequel. Too bad the bone-head crew augered one of the retrofitted ones in at Dover a few years ago.

BTW Ral... seems like helicopters are taking over the carriers these days. Are they going to leave any deck space for you guys?

[M-technik-3]

Meh, a lot of stuff that they say needs to be modernized doesn't actually need to be modernized. The B52's for example may be almost 50 years old but their airframes are good for another 40 years or so. Not only that but we have so damn many of them.

The current fleet of B52 have been re-winged and reskinned. They are not the old Monster tail airplanes of the late 50's and early 60's. But on the other hand they are work horses. There was talk of adding modern CF6 to them on new pylons but the wings would need to beefed up or they would de rate them like our CF6's on the new C5M.

It's more about fuel efficency now and climb to altitude performance.

don't the C-17 and C-5 fill different roles for the AF? The C-17 can go a lot of places the C-5 can't, right?

Yes and No, the C17 was designed for basically C130's role but it was a replacement for the C141B which was a medium lift Strategic Lifter. It doesn't do that well as it's not fuel efficent and requires being air to air fueld for most medium loads crossing the Atlantic. Sad but it was purchased as Boeing was smart when they sucked up McDonnel Douglas and made a production facility in every one of the lower 48 states so it meant jobs. Final assembly is at Long Beach Cali for them.

As a tactical aeroplane they are awesome. But we do short field and airdrop and NVG as well. Only with an extra 85K lbs of cargo.

[Ral]

BTW Ral... seems like helicopters are taking over the carriers these days. Are they going to leave any deck space for you guys?

Ha who knows. Fire Scout* chasing you guys off the small boys? (Navy boats with a helicopter pad, but not a giant troop transport.) I was surprised, though, to see more UCAV* displays than helicopter promotions at Tailhook last month. Even the V-22* was more heavily promoted.

*=pics.

Fire Scout:


UCAV:


V-22:

[decay]

lots of guys in my unit got to ride in and out of ramadi in ospreys. i was jealous.